Response to Ariel and Hasid’s Letter
This article defends the importance of studying LLMs for alcohol misuse support outside clinical settings, noting most affected individuals never engage with formal care and use digital tools independently.
Jessica (Jess) Sousa is a senior policy analyst at RAND and a licensed certified social worker in Massachusetts. Her work at RAND focuses on behavioral health care delivery, telehealth policy and implementation, and patient and service member experiences with behavioral health care and the use of digital health technologies. She has over a decade of experience conducting qualitative and mixed-methods research, using semi-structured interviews, surveys, and focus groups to examine the perspectives and experiences of patients, service members, veterans, and health care providers. She is also experienced in facilitating research advisory groups comprised of people with mental health and substance use conditions to inform study design, implementation, and interpretation. Over the course of her career in clinical trials and health policy research, Sousa has managed the operational and analytic components of numerous complex, multi-site research projects funded by federal and nonprofit sponsors. At RAND, she has served as project manager on several congressionally mandated studies and contributed to deliverables submitted to federal sponsors in support of their reports to Congress, including an evaluation of telementoring programs designed to expand the capacity of primary care providers in rural and underserved settings, an assessment of federal investments in health services and primary care research, and analyses of the effects of federal policy changes on health care market consolidation.
Sousa holds dual master's degrees in clinical social work and health policy and management from Boston University and a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.
Education
M.S.W. in social work, Boston University; M.P.H. in health service management, Boston University; B.A. in psychology, University of Pennsylvania
Selected Work
- Sousa, J. L., Huskamp, H. A., Mehrotra, A., Busch, A. B., & Uscher-Pines, L., "Experiences With Online Mutual Support Groups for Problematic Drinking. ," Psychiatric Services, 2025
- Sousa, J.L., Raja, P., Rabinowitz, M., Richard, J., Smith, A., Huskamp, H.A., Mehrotra, A., Busch, A.B., Uscher-Pines, L., "Patient Experiences with Group Teletherapy for the Treatment of Mental Illness: A Qualitative Study.," Psychiatric Services, 2024
- Sousa, Jessica L., Kimberly A. Hepner, Carol P. Roth, Lia Pak, and Teague Ruder, Assessing Readiness in Service Members Who Receive Private-Sector Behavioral Health Care, RAND Corporation (RR-A2255-1), 2024
- Sousa, J., Smith, A., Richard, J., Rabinowitz, M., Raja, P., Mehrotra, A., Busch, A.B., Huskamp, H.A., & Uscher-Pines, L., "Choosing or Losing in Behavioral Health: A Study of Patient Experiences Selecting Telehealth Versus In-Person Care. ," Health Affairs, 42(9), 2023
- Uscher-Pines, L., Kapinos, K., Rodriguez, C., Pérez-Dávila, S., Raja, P., Rodriguez, J.A., Rabinowitz, M., Youdelman, M., & Sousa, J.L., "Access Challenges for Patients with Limited English Proficiency: A Secret-Shopper Study of In-Person and Telehealth Behavioral Health Services in California Safety-Net Clinics," Health Affairs Scholar, 1(3), 2023
- Hepner, Kimberly A., Joshua Breslau, Jessica L. Sousa, Carol P. Roth, Teague Ruder, Isabelle González, Cheryl K. Montemayor, and Beth Ann Griffin, Virtual Behavioral Health for Army Soldiers: Soldier Perspectives and Patterns of Treatment, RAND Corporation (RR-A2241-1), 2023
- Sousa, J.L., Raja, P., Huskamp, H.A., Mehrotra, A., Busch, A.B., Barnett, M.L. and Uscher-Pines, L., "Perspectives of Patients Receiving Telemedicine Services for Opioid Use Disorder Treatment: A Qualitative Analysis of User Experiences," Journal of Addiction Medicine, 16(6), 2022
Authored by Jessica L. Sousa
54 Results
